This article contains spoilers for The Vampire Lestat premiere.In Anne Rice’s beloved book series The Vampire Chronicles, rebellious bloodsucker Lestat de Lioncourt gets drawn into some truly complex romances, but the third season of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire series, The Vampire Lestat, explores the most complex relationship of them all: the one he has with his mother.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});It’s not until the final moments of the season 3 premiere that viewers get to meet Gabriella de Lioncourt (portrayed by Pride and Prejudice star Jennifer Ehle) after seeing Lestat intermittently text a mysterious lover throughout the episode. Fixated and yearning, Lestat clearly wants and needs to be reunited with this elusive figure from his past, as documentarian Daniel Molloy’s question of whether Lestat stuttered as a child is repeated until he finally does so when Gabriella emerges from the shadows. Sam Reid, who plays Lestat in Rolin Jones’ triumphant adaptation of Rice’s books, understands his character’s nuanced and problematic past and present better than almost anyone, teases out how Gabriella factors into the restrained origins of Rice’s famous vampire.“He didn’t know what to do with his life, and his mother took control of it and pushed him to become the thing that she wanted him to be or that she wanted to be herself,” Reid says. “He never got the chance to fully discover, and as soon as he got the chance to discover, he gets ripped away and turned into this other big monster, larger-than-life creature. That’s the thing. The joy of being able to play the fetus of what this overbearing character is. It’s really fun to go back-and-forth.”The Vampire Lestat opens with Lestat beginning a personal recollection of his “failures” during this era of stardom and debauchery, having seemingly moved on from his flirtation with becoming a rock star. Showrunner Rolin Jones says that one particular piece of Gabriella’s dialogue in Rice’s tome helped craft the energy between her and Lestat, framing the season around the vampire’s perceived failures.“It’s something that Gabriella (or Gabrielle in the book) says to Armand about working your way through failure,” Rolin notes, adding, “It was such a curious thing for her to say in the book. It’s pretty clear she didn’t think much of Armand. And then you realize that Lestat is sitting in the room when she says that. That cracked open the entire thing for me. Anne had placed that there, for me, magically, about ‘this is where you’re going. This is what we’re going to do, Lestat. Work through failure. Find yourself on the other side of that.'”Though there might be some crucial therapy that Lestat is working through with his mother at this stage in his long existence, Reid is aware that Lestat and Gabriella’s romantic relationship is still pushing boundaries. Rice wrote Lestat to be Gabriella’s maker, saving her from death as her health rapidly declined, but this created an uncomfortable and complex dynamic between the pair as they seesawed between being parent and child.“There aren’t a lot of real-world analogues for it but if you separate them all, there are,” Reid explains. “There’s the mother/son, and then there’s lovers and maker and fledgling. You put the three of those things together and play them all at the same time. Which is what this show is most of the time – you’re playing like five things at the same time. It’s really fun. It’s so complicated, it’s such a messy thing. “To do that with Jennifer was just a total joy. Pulling and pushing and seeing where we could go and how far we could go. It’s an amazing bunch of dynamics we play. It’s not done for exploitation or to be shocking. It is fundamental to the character and structurally who he is and why he is as fucked up as he is. I feel like you learn so much about these characters going through that. It’s very uncomfortable to watch. But the book series has never been comfortable. There’s nothing comfortable about it.”Reid also credits Rolin and writer Hannah Moscovitch for giving “humanity and depth to the trauma of carrying an incestuous relationship around with you your whole life,” adding, “Because you need your mother. You need that maternal love. You need to be receiving that love. And when it’s a sexual love that you are given, it’s very, very complex. Your whole relationship with your sexual identity is tied in with your desire to be loved as a child. You can’t get a more desperate need for a character to be loved by the masses for who he is.”New episodes of The Vampire Lestat premiere Sundays on AMC.The post Sam Reid Reveals How the Gabriella Relationship Is Key to The Vampire Lestat appeared first on Den of Geek.